Thursday, 31 October 2013

In this second instalment of Persson's
trilogy of police procedurals featuring the "small, fat and primitive" Evert Backstrom, the grand master's
most appallingly repulsive (and funniest) character is finally given his
fifteen minutes of fame by way of his patented combination of laziness, luck,
and an unbelievable sense of timing. A seemingly ordinary murder puzzles
Backstrom, who is struggling with strict orders from his doctor to lead a
healthier life. His gut feeling proves him right: within days, his team has
another murder linked to the first on their hands, and reports of alleged ties
to a Securicor heist gone out of control, killing two. The nation needs a hero,
and the newly appointed head of the Vasterort police force Anna Holt needs
somebody to kill the dragon for her. Who better to heed to the task than Evert
Backstrom: self-sufficient, ostentatious, devoid of moral, Hawaii shirt-clad, and, latterly, armed?He Who
Kills the Dragon is by Leif G W Persson and is due to be published in
October 2013.

Kings’s Return is by Andrew Swanston and is
due to be published in April 2014.Spring 1661: Thomas Hill travels from his home in Romsey to London to attend the
coronation of King Charles II.His
sister Margaret has died and both his nieces are now married.At a dinner party after the Coronation,
Thomas meets the charming Chandle Stoner, and Sir Joseph Williamson, security
advisor to His Majesty, and in charge of the newly restored Post Office.Learning of Thomas’s skill with code,
Williamson asks him to take charge of deciphering coded letters intercepted at
the Post Office.Reluctantly Thomas
agrees.A spate of murders take place in
London –
including two employees of the Post Office.Thomas finds himself dragged into the search for the murderer – or
murderers.It soon becomes apparent that
those responsible are closer to Thomas-
and his loved ones – than he imagined. But can he ensure that they are
apprehended for their crimes before it’s too late?

A
young woman has been found dead and covered in snow behind a nursery school in
a Stockholm
suburb.She is the fourth murder victim
in a short time and with the same characteristics: a young mother, stabbed from
behind.The offices of the Evening Standard are awash with rumours
of a serial killer, but journalist Annika Bengtzon dismisses it as wild
fantasy.As the murder spree continues
in Stockholm,
the police too begin to think that they have a serial killer on their
hands.Meanwhile Annika is dragged into
a violent hostage situation in Nairobi that
involves her husband – a situation that shakes both Europe and East Africa.The
demands of the kidnappers are both impossible and unreasonable.But when the demands are rejected, the kidnapper
begins to execute the hostages, one by one…. Borderline is by Liza Marklund and is due to be published in
February 2014.

There are no other women on earth like Angela Lassey. That’s
not her real name, of course. In her purse there are six different drivers’
licenses and twelve different passports, each with a different name and
photograph. Over the course of twenty years she's pulled robberies on five
continents and stolen things more valuable then many people could even imagine.
She speaks four languages with the clarity and confidence of a native speaker
and racks up stratospheric shopping bills where ever she goes.She's been a blonde, a brunette, and a
redhead. She's been dark-skinned and light, blue-eyed and brown, young and old.
She's gained weight and lost it again, she's worn platform shoes and slouched
to conceal her height, and she's smoked like a chimney and bleached her teeth.
She’s never the same woman from one week to the next.She doesn’t call any place home.There's no real term for what Angela Lassey
does for a living. She is a bank robber, sure, and a crook and a thief and a
heister, but Angela's particular talent has no proper, accepted name. In Sweden
someone had called her a skyggemannen. In the Netherlands they'd called
her a spook. In South America she was a desaparecido.In America,
she was simply a ghostman.She is the master of the disappearing act.
She can make anything or anyone disappear, for the right price. She has worked
with some of the best crooks in the world, the best boxmen and jugmarkers and
hacks, but she's never met anyone better at disappearing then she was.Angela Lassey is like human mist.So she’s the perfect person to call when you need
to hide. Like Sabo Park does after unexpectedly stumbling across treasure
during a sapphire heist on the China Sea. What he has is so valuable that those
who know of its existence will never stop their search. He has to vanish, like
a ghost. Because now he has it, he is the richest criminal in the world.Vanshing
Games is by Roger Hobbs and is due to be published in July 2014.

Morning Frost is the third book in the D I
Jack Frost prequel by James Henry and it is due to be published in November
2014.It's been one of the worst days of
Detective Sergeant Jack Frost's life. He has buried his wife Mary, and must now
endure the wake, attended by all of Denton's
finest. All, that is, apart from DC Sue Clark, who spends the night pursuing a
bogus tip-off, before being summoned to the discovery of a human hand. And
things get worse. Local entrepreneur Harry Baskin is shot inside his nightclub,
fake fivers are being circulated, and a famous painting goes missing. As the
week goes on, a cyclist is found dead in suspicious circumstances, and the more
body parts appear. Frost is on the case, but another disaster - one he is
entirely unprepared for - is about to strike...

'Call
your mother.' In the Devonshire
countryside, a masked stranger is preying on young women - luring them into his
car, taking them to a place they can never be found, and then ordering them to
call home. At first he doesn't kill. His motive for terrifying the women seems
unclear. But every killer has to start somewhere, and soon enough he will get a
taste for something even more sinister. Meanwhile 10-year-old Ruby Trick,
living with her parents in a damp, crumbling house by the sea, is about to come
of age in the most terrifying way possible...The Facts of Life and Death is
by Belinda Bauer and is due to be published in March 2014

'Somebody!'
I half-sob and then, more quietly, 'Please.'
The words seem absorbed by the afternoon
heat, lost amongst the trees. In their aftermath, the silence descends again. I
know then that I'm not going anywhere...Sean is on the run. We don't know why
and we don't know from whom, but we do know he's abandoned his battered,
blood-stained car in the middle of an isolated, lonely part of rural France at the
height of a sweltering summer. Desperate to avoid the police, he takes to the
parched fields and country lanes only to be caught in the vicious jaws of a
trap. Near unconscious from pain and loss of blood, he is freed and taken in by
two women - daughters of the owner of a rundown local farm with its ramshackle
barn, blighted vineyard and the brooding lake. And it's then that Sean's problems
really start...Stone Bruises is by
Simon Beckett and is due to be published in January 2014

Silencer is the latest book in the
Nick Stone series by Andy McNab and is due to be published in October 2013.1993:
Under deep cover, Nick Stone and a specialist surveillance team have spent
weeks in the jungles and city streets of Colombia. Their mission: to locate
the boss of the world's most murderous drugs cartel - and terminate him with
extreme prejudice. Now they can strike. But to get close enough to fire the
fatal shot, Nick must reveal his face. It's a risk he's willing to take - since
only the man who is about to die will see him. Or so he thinks... 2012: Nick is in Moscow; semi-retired; semi-married to Anna;
very much the devoted father of their newborn son. But when the boy falls
dangerously ill and the doctor who saves him comes under threat, Nick finds
himself back in the firing line. To stop his cover being terminally blown, he
must follow a trail that begins in Triad-controlled Hong
Kong and propels him back into the even more brutal world he
thought he'd left behind. The forces ranged against him have guns, helicopters,
private armies and a terrified population in their vice-like grip. Nick Stone
has two decades of operational skills that may no longer be deniable - and a
fierce desire to protect a woman and a child who now mean more to him than life
itself.

Young policewoman Lacey Flint knows that
the Thames is a dangerous place – after all,
she lives on it and works on it – but she’s always been lucky. Until one day,
when she finds a body floating in the water. Who was this woman and why was she
wrapped so carefully in white burial cloths before being hidden in the fast
flowing depths.DCI Dana Tulloch hates
to admit it, but she’s fond of the mysterious Lacey. Even if she keeps on
interfering in her investigations, and is meddling with the latest floater
case. But now she's got to break some terrible news to her - news that could
destroy Lacey's fragile state of mind.And Lacey will need to keep her wits about her
because there's a killer that's lurking around her boat, leaving her gifts
she'd rather not receive . . . A Dark and Twisted Tide is by Sharon (SJ) Bolton and is due to be published in May 2014.

The Sisters - Easter and her little
sister Ruby are waiting it out in a foster home. Their mum died after a drug
overdose, and their dad is a loser who walked out on them all. The Dad - Wade
has no claim to them - he signed away his rights years ago, and Easter doesn't
even want a father who'd give them up that easily. But one night he turns up
unannounced and takes them anyway. The Psychopath - Robert Pruitt is just out
of prison when he gets the chance to settle an old score with the man who
ruined his life. He's got to find him first, but luckily the trail is easy to
follow. Because the guy's just kidnapped his two girls...The
Dark Road to Mercy is by Wiley Cash and is due to be published in January
2014.

When Jenny, an ordinary schoolgirl on the
island of Gotland, is discovered by a modelling
agency, her life changes overnight.Soon
she is considered one of the hottest stars and is thrown into a world of VIP
parties and glamour.While Jenny is
enjoying her new exciting life in Stockholm,
Agnes, a few years her junior, has been hospitalised due to a serious eating
disorder.She too dreamt of living in
the limelight, but is now fading away.Watching at Agnes’ beside is her worried father.Since Agnes’ mother and brother were
tragically killed in a car accident a few years previously, his daughter is all
he has. But tragedy also lies in wait for successful Jenny.During a lavish fashion shoot on Gotland’s barren isolated peninsula, Furillen, her new
boyfriend, the fashion photographer Markus falls victim to a murder
attempt.He is found in an isolated
spot, covered in blood and brutally assaulted – but alive.Will he be able to tell police inspector
Anders Knutas anything that will lead the police to the perpetrator before it’s
too late?For along time Jenny and Agnes
remain unaware that their lives are entwined.But someone is keeping an eye on them.Someone with plans to intervene in their lives an deliver their own kind
of Justice.The Dangerous Game is by Mari Jungstedt and is due to be published
in March 2014.

Don’t Stand So
Close is the
debut novel by Luana Lewis and is due to be published in February 2014.What would you do if a young girl knocked on
your door and asked for your help? If it was snowing and she was freezing cold,
but you were afraid and alone? What would you do if you let her in, but
couldn't make her leave? What if she told you terrible lies about someone you
love, but the truth was even worse? Stella has been cocooned in her home for
three years. Severely agoraphobic, she knows she is safe in the stark, isolated
house she shares with her husband, Max. The traumatic memories of her final
case as a psychologist are that much easier to keep at a distance, too. But the
night that Blue arrives on her doorstep with her frightened eyes and sad
stories, Stella's carefully controlled world begins to unravel around her. Don't Stand So Close is a chilling and
suspenseful read.

For thousands of years we guarded it. But
now it has been found. This could be the end - for us; for our organisation;
for the world. You must destroy it, and those who have taken it. An ancient
object is discovered in a Cairo
souk. Hours later, the market trader who sold it is tortured to death. As the
bodies begin to pile up, a request for help is sent to BritishMuseum
historian Angela Lewis. Angela travels to Spain with her ex-husband,
undercover police officer Chris Bronson. There they discover the key to the
greatest secret in the history of Christianity. Their only problem is
deciphering it before they are brutally murdered like those before them... The Lost Testament is by James Becker
and is due to be published in November 2013.The Brotherhood of the Skull
also by James Becker will be published in July 2014. At the turn of the
13th century the religious order known as the Knights Templar was ruthlessly
chased down, tortured and eliminated. Fast-forward to the present day, where we
are thrust into a nail-biting chase for the truth behind the myth of the
Templar Treasure.

A Pleasure and a Calling is by Phil Hogan and is due
to be published in February 2014. You
won't remember Mr Heming. He showed you round your comfortable home, suggested
a sustainable financial package, negotiated a price with the owner and called
you with the good news. The less good news is that, all these years later, he
still has the key. That's absurd, you laugh. Of all the many hundreds of houses
he has sold, why would he still have the key to mine? The answer to that is, he
has the keys to them all. William Heming's every pleasure is in his leafy
community. He loves and knows every inch of it, feels nurtured by it, and would
defend it - perhaps not with his life but if it came to it, with yours...

On
a cold December morning in 1841, a small boy is enticed away from his mother
and his throat savagely cut. But when the people of Dublin learn why John Delahunt committed this
vile crime, the outcry leaves no room for compassion. His fate is sealed, but
this feckless TrinityCollege student and secret informer for the
authorities in DublinCastle seems neither to
regret what he did nor fear his punishment. Sitting in Kilmainham Gaol in the
days leading up to his execution, Delahunt tells his story in a final, deeply
unsettling statement...Dublin
in the mid-19th century was a city on the edge - a turbulent time of suspicion
and mistrust and the scent of rebellion against the Crown in the air.
Beautifully written, brilliantly researched and with a seductive sense of
period and place, this unnervingly compelling novel boasts a colourful
assortment of characters: from carousing Trinity students, unscrupulous
lowlifes and blackmailers to dissectionists, phrenologists and sinister agents
of Dublin Castle who are operating according to their own twisted rules. And at
its heart lie the doomed John Delahunt and Helen, his wife. Unconventional, an
aspiring-writer and daughter of an eminent surgeon, she pursued Delahunt,
married him and thereby ruined her own life. And as for Delahunt himself, we
follow him from elegant ballrooms and tenement houses to taverns, courtrooms
and to the impoverished alleyways where John Delahunt readily betrays his
friends, his society and ultimately, himself.The Convictions
of John Delahunt
is by Andrew Hughes and is due to be published in March 2014.

The Day Before
You Came is
by Paula Daly and is due to be published in April 2014.Natty and Sean Wainwright are happily
married.Rock solid in fact.So when Natty’s oldest school friend, Eve
Dalladay appears – just as their daughter’s appendix explodes on a school trip
in France
– Natty has no qualms about leaving Eve helping Sean out at home.Two weeks later and Natty finds Eve has
slotted into family life too well.Natty’s husband has fallen in love with Eve.He’s sorry, he tells her, but their marriage
is over.With no option but to put a
brave face on things for the sake of the children, Natty embarks on building a
new life for herself.And then she
receives a note.Eve has done this
before, more than one and with fatal consequences …..

I
believe, from what I can hear, that either my daughter or my wife has just been
attacked. I don't know the outcome. The house is silent. Fourteen years ago two
teenage lovers were brutally murdered in a patch of remote woodland. The prime
suspect confessed to the crimes and was imprisoned. Now, one family is still
trying to put the memory of the killings behind them. But at their isolated
hilltop house...the nightmare is about to return.Wolf is
the seventh novel in the Jack Caffery series by Mo Hayder and it is due to be
published in February 2014.

Bryant & May
and the Bleeding Heart is
the latest book in the Bryant & May series by Christopher Fowler and is due
to be published in March 2014. It's a fresh start for the Met's oddest
investigation team, the Peculiar Crimes Unit. Their first case involves two
teenagers who see a dead man rising from his grave in a London park. And if that's not alarming
enough, one of them is killed in a hit and run accident. Stranger still, in the
moments between when he was last seen alive and found dead on the pavement,
someone has changed his shirt...Much to his frustration, Arthur Bryant is not
allowed to investigate. Instead, he has been tasked with finding out how
someone could have stolen the ravens from the Tower of London.
All seven birds have vanished from one of the most secure fortresses in the
city. And, as the legend has it, when the ravens leave, the nation falls. Soon
it seems death is all around and Bryant and May must confront a group of
latter-day bodysnatchers, explore an eerie funeral parlour and unearth the
gruesome legend of Bleeding Heart Yard. More graves are desecrated, further
deaths occur, and the symbol of the Bleeding Heart seems to turn up everywhere
- it's even discovered hidden in the PCU's offices. And when Bryant is
blindfolded and taken to the headquarters of a secret society, he realises that
this case is more complex than even he had imagined, and that everyone is
hiding something. The Grim Reaper walks abroad and seems to be stalking him,
playing on his fears of premature burial. Rich in strange characters and
steeped in London's
true history, this is Bryant & May's most peculiar and disturbing case of
all.

'I
don’t like killing, but I’m good at it. Murder isn’t so bad from a distance,
just shapes in my scope. Close up work though, the garrotte around the neck,
the knife in the heart, it’s not for me. Too much empathy, that’s my problem. Usually.
But not today. Today is different…’ The year is 1955 and something is very
wrong with the world: Churchill is dead and WW2 didn’t happen. Europe is in
thrall to a nuclear-armed Nazi Germany. Only Britain and its Empire holds out,
bound by an uneasy truce and all the while German scientists are experimenting
with terrifying forces beyond their understanding - forces that are driving
them to the brink of insanity and beyond. Berlin is a hotbed of suspicion and
betrayal - a lone British assassin is fighting a private war with the Nazis;
the Gestapo are on the trail of a beautiful young resistance fighter and the
head of the SS plots to dispose of an increasingly decrepit Adolf Hitler and
become Fuhrer. While in London, a sinister and treacherous cabal will stop at nothing
to conceal the conspiracy of the century.Four desperate scenarios that are destined to collide with catastrophic
effect. And it all hinges on a single kill in the morning . . .A Kill
in the Morning is by Graeme Shimmin and is due to be published in June
2014.

Wednesday, 30 October 2013

Little, Brown has bought world rights to a novel inspired by ITV crime series "Broadchurch".

Sphere Fiction commissioning editor Jade Chandler bought the book from Cathy King at Independent Talent, representing "Broadchurch" screenwriter Chris Chibnall, who will co-write the novel with thriller author Erin Kelly.

As well as including previously unseen material, the novel—to be published next August—will "elaborate on the existing plot, delving deeper into the lives and back stories of the existing characters".

Chibnall paid tribute to Kelly's writing, describing it as "beautiful, emotive and suffused with tension", while Kelly commented: "Like everyone else I know, I was gripped and moved by 'Broadchurch'. I’m utterly thrilled to be writing the novel, not least because it gave me an excuse to watch the whole series again, multiple times. It’s testament to the writing, the performances and the photography that I was spellbound even when I knew the outcome. I can’t wait to delve even deeper into the hearts and thoughts of the characters and to bring the town to life on the page."

US rights in the novel have been sold to Minotaur at St Martin's Press.

"Broadchurch", set in a small Dorset town and starring David Tennant and Olivia Colman as a mismatched detective duo, had viewing figures of nine million and has been recommissioned for a second series. The drama has just won four TV Daggers at the Specsavers Crime Thriller Awards and has been sold to 100 territories worldwide, including the US, Canada, Australia, Brazil, France, Germany, the Netherlands and China.

Audiobook publisher and retailer AudioGO has confirmed that it has filed for administration.

Sad news for the BBC Audiobook company it has filed a notice of intention to appoint administrators on Friday (25th October), with firm BDO expected to be appointed to the role this week.

The company suspended its business operations earlier this month, following "recently discovered significant financial challenges". Hopes that the company would find a buyer or investor before administration have now receded.

Based in Bath, AudioGO has a workforce of around 100 employees and employs a stable of freelance producers, editors and actors. The company has confirmed that "significant redundancies" are expected later this week.

AudioGO were responsible for producing crime and thrillers for authors such as Agatha Christie, David Baldacci, Dick Francis, Lindsey Davis, M.C.Beaton and John le Carré – to name but a few.

Novelist Solves Decades-Old Crime?

The 1931 murder of Julia Wallace has been one of Britain’s most notorious crimes--at least until now, if the findings of novelist P.D. James are correct. Though, given James’ experience in thinking about death and murder through 20 novels, one would think she’d be in the know.

According to The Guardian, James isn’t the first novelist to be fascinated by the case “which Raymond Chandler described as the ‘the nonpareil of all murder mysteries’. Dorothy L. Sayers wrote that it ‘provides for the detective novelist an unrivalled field for speculation’.”

Writing in the Sunday Times magazine, James claimed that the murder of Julia Wallace in Liverpool, which “compares only to the Ripper murders in 1888 in the amount of writing, both fiction and non-fiction, which it has created”, was misunderstood from the beginning by the police, the judge and jury.

Her 1982 novel, The Skull Beneath the Skin, the fictional murder of Lady Ralston, is thought to parallel the Wallace case, and she refers to it directly in the detective chief-inspector Dalgliesh novel, The Murder Room (2003).

The Guardian goes on to detail the available clues that convinced James her positing was correct. The case is “essentially tragic and has psychological subtleties to which it would take a Balzac to do justice,” James wrote. She builds a picture of Wallace as a man worn down by failure and disappointment who eventually cracked: “Perhaps when he struck the first tremendous blow that killed her, and the 10 afterwards delivered with such force, it was years of striving and constant disappointment that he was obliterating.”

Julia Wallis

Back in 2002, Patricia Cornwell put forth a similarly forceful theory with regards to the true identity of Jack the Ripper, a theory she outlined closely in her non-fiction book Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper--Case Closed.

Blow the Bloody Doors off!

London's Barbican Hall is to host an evening of music by Sonny Rollins, Quincy Jones, John Barry and Roy Budd from Michael Caine's most iconic films on 6 February 2014 @ 19:30
The four films singled out for concert performances here are classics with music composed by an exceptional quartet of musicians - Alfie (Sonny Rollins), The Ipcress File (John Barry), The Italian Job (Quincy Jones) and Get Carter (Roy Budd).
These composers represent the best of British and American music of the time. Musical director Terry Edwards (whose recent Barbican performances include Beck: Song Reader Live and Big Star’s Third) has assembled a crack team of versatile musicians from places as far-flung as the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Polar Bear and Madness.

The evening places the music centre stage, intercut with excerpts from the films. Click here to book.

Tuesday, 29 October 2013

Louise Penny is a Canadian author of mystery novels set in the Canadian province of Quebec centred on the work of Chief Inspector Armand Gamache of the Sûreté du Québec. Louise Penny's first career was as a radio broadcaster for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. After she turned to writing, she won numerous awards for her work, including the Agatha Award for best mystery novel of the year for four consecutive years (2007–2010) and the Anthony Award for two novels. Her novels have been published in 23 languages.

When the Light Gets In: Christmas is approaching, and in Québec it’s a time of dazzling snowfalls, bright lights, and gatherings with friends in front of blazing hearths. But shadows are falling on the usually festive season for Chief Inspector Armand Gamache. Most of his best agents have left the Homicide Department, his old friend and lieutenant Jean-Guy Beauvoir hasn’t spoken to him in months, and hostile forces are lining up against him. When Gamache receives a message from Myrna Landers that a longtime friend has failed to arrive for Christmas in the village of Three Pines, he welcomes the chance to get away from the city. Mystified by Myrna's reluctance to reveal her friend's name, Gamache soon discovers the missing woman was once one of the most famous people not just in North America, but in the world, and now goes unrecognized by virtually everyone except the mad, brilliant poet Ruth Zardo. Tickets must be booked in advance from https://louise-penny.eventbrite.co.uk

An Evening of conversation about Faith & Science, Chaired by Alison Joseph ROWAN WILLIAMS, Baron Williams of Oystermouth PC FBA FRSL FLSW is an Anglican bishop, poet and theologian. He was the 104th Archbishop of Canterbury, Metropolitan of the Province of Canterbury and Primate of All England, offices he held from December 2002 to December 2012.Williams was previously Bishop of Monmouth and Archbishop of Wales, making him the first Archbishop of Canterbury in modern times not to be appointed from within the Church of England. He spent much of his earlier career as an academic at the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford successively. Apart from Welsh, he speaks or reads nine other languages. RAYMOND TALLIS F.Med.Sci., F.R.C.P., F.R.S.A.is a polymath. He is a philosopher, poet, novelist, cultural critic and a retired medical physician and clinical neuroscientist. Specializing in geriatrics, Tallis served on several UK commissions on medical care of the aged and was an editor or major contributor to two key textbooks in the field, The Clinical Neurology of Old Age and Textbook of Geriatric Medicine and Gerontology. In a 2010 Interview with author Jesse Horn, Tallis expressed that he is a optimistic humanist and an atheist. “Given that I was born a few months after Auschwitz was liberated, it is hardly surprising that I have a strong sense of the evil that humans – individually and collectively – do. My position is that of cautious and chastened optimism, a belief that, if we are ourselves well-treated by others, we will usually treat others reasonably well.” ALISON JOSEPH was born in North London and educated at Leeds University. After graduating she worked as a presenter on a local radio station then, moving back to London, for Channel 4. She later became a partner in an independent production company and one of its commissions was a series about women and religion. She has since worked as a reader for BBC Radio Drama. Alison, who now has three children, lives in London. Alison is the author of the crime fiction novels featuring the nun Sister Agnes. Tickets from: https://faith-science.eventbrite.co.uk

An Evening with Charles PalliserThursday, December 5th at 18:30

Charles Palliser is a best-selling novelist, American-born but British-based. His most well-known novel, "The Quincunx", has sold over a million copies internationally. With his new novel, Rustication, he returns to the town of Thurchester, which he evoked so hauntingly in The Unburied. It is winter 1863, and Richard Shenstone, aged seventeen, has been sent down—“rusticated”—from Cambridge under a cloud of suspicion. Addicted to opium and tormented by sexual desire, he finds temporary refuge in a dilapidated old mansion on the southern English coast inhabited by his newly impoverished mother and his sister, Effie. Soon, graphic and threatening letters begin to circulate among his neighbors, and Richard finds himself the leading suspect in a series of crimes and misdemeanors ranging from vivisection to murder. Tickets from: https://charles-palliser.eventbrite.co.uk

Ian Rankin in conversation with Alison Bruce Tuesday, December 10th at 19:00

Ian Rankin returns to East Anglia before taking a year off from writing! Ian will not be carrying out any events until 2015, so this is your last chance to hear him for a while. This evening he is being interviewed by popular local crime writer Alison Bruce. They will cover a wide range of topics including Ian's new book.

Rebus is back on the force, albeit with a demotion and a chip on his shoulder. A 30-year-old case is being reopened, and Rebus’s team from back then is suspected of foul play. With Malcolm Fox as the investigating officer is the past and present about to collide in a shocking and murderous fashion? And does Rebus have anything to hide? His colleagues back then called themselves ‘The Saints’, and swore a bond on something called ‘the Shadow Bible’. But times have changed and the crimes of the past may not stay hidden much longer, especially with a referendum on Scottish independence just around the corner. Who are the saints and who the sinners? And can the one ever become the other?

Jill Paton Walsh is an English novelist and children's writer. She is best known for the Peter Wimsey–Harriet Vane mysteries that have completed or continued the work of Dorothy L. Sayers. Her latest book ‘The Late Scholar’ is a new murder mystery featuring Lord Peter Wimsey - now a Duke - and his wife Harriet Vane, set in an Oxford college in the 1950s. Peter Wimsey is pleased to discover that along with a Dukedom he has inherited the duties of 'visitor' at an Oxford college. When the fellows appeal to him to resolve a dispute, he and Harriet set off happily to spend some time in Oxford. But the dispute turns out to be embittered. The voting is evenly balanced between two passionate parties - evenly balanced, that is, until several of the fellows unexpectedly die. The Warden has a casting vote, but the Warden has disappeared. And the causes of death of the deceased fellows bear an uncanny resemblance to the murder methods in Peter's past cases - methods that Harriet has used in her published novels. Tickets from: https://jill-paton-walsh.eventbrite.co.uk

Monday, 28 October 2013

Former
homicide detective and CIA agent Lemuel Gunn left behind the Afghanistan
battlefield for a trailer in New Mexico to forge a new career as a private
investigator. Out of nowhere comes
Ornella Neppi, a woman making a mess of her uncle's bail bonds business. She asks Gunn to track down the source of her
troubles, a man named Emilio Gava, who has jumped bail after being arrested for
buying cocaine. But no photos of Gava
seem to exist. As Gunn begins his search
for a man it seems that someone is protecting, hitting dead end after dead end,
he starts to suspect that Gava might not exist at all - The grittiest novel yet
from the masterful Robert Littell, A
Nasty Piece of Work is unmissable, powerful reading. As Gunn's game of cat and mouse unfolds -
every step leading him closer to the truth - he draws ever closer to an unseen
enemy's line of fire. A Nasty Piece of Work is due to be
published in March 2014

Dry Bones is the third book in Fintan Dunne trilogy by Peter
Quinn and is due to be published in April 2014.
Fintan Dunne, the detective at the centre of The Man Who Never Returned
and Hour of the Cat, is back in this spellbinding story of an ill-fated OSS
mission into the heart of the Eastern front and its consequences more than a
decade after the war's end. As the Red
Army continues its unstoppable march towards Berlin in the winter of 1945,
Dunne and his fellow soldier Dick Van Hull volunteer for a dangerous drop
behind enemy lines to rescue a team of OSS officers trying to abet the Czech
resistance. When the plan goes south,
Dunne and Van Hull uncover a secret that will change both of their lives. Years later, Dunne is drawn back into the
shadowy realm of Cold War espionage in an effort to clear his friend's name and
right an injustice so shocking that men would, quite literally, kill to keep it
quiet.

In
1856, a baying crowd of over 30,000 people gathered outside Stafford prison to
watch the execution of a village doctor from Staffordshire. One of the last people to be publicly hanged,
the 'Rugely Poisoner', the 'Prince of Poisoners', 'The greatest villain who
ever stood trial at the Old Bailey,' as Charles Dickens described him, Dr
William Palmer was convicted in 1855 of murdering his best friend, but was
suspected of poisoning more than a dozen other people, including his wife,
children, brother and mother-in-law - cashing in on their life insurance to
fund his monstrously indebted gambling habit.
Highlighting Palmer's particularly gruesome penchant for strychnine, his
trial made news across Europe: the most memorable in fifty years, according to
the Old Bailey's presiding Lord Chief Justice.
He was a new kind of murderer - respectable, middle class, personable,
and consequently more terrifying - and he became Britain's most infamous figure
until the arrival of Jack the Ripper. The
first widely available account of one of the most notorious, yet lesser-known,
mass-murderers in British history, The
Poisoner takes a fresh look at Palmer's life and disputed crimes,
ultimately asking 'just how evil was this man?’
With previously undiscovered letters from Palmer and new forensic
examination of his victims, Stephen Bates presents not only an astonishing and
controversial revision of Palmer's entire story, but takes the reader into the
very psyche of a killer. The Poisoner is due to be published in
June 2014.

In
February 2014, Duckworth Overlook is due to publish The Miernik Dossier and The Last
Supper by Charles McCarry.In The Miernik Dossier Cool, urbane Paul
Christopher is the perfect American agent, currently working in deep cover in
the twilight world of international intrigue.But now even he cannot tell good from bad in a maze of double and
triple-crosses.As a group of
international agents embark on a trip in a Cadillac from Switzerland to the
Sudan, Christopher knows that he has to find out which one is about to unleash
bloody terrorism - and God help everyone if he makes a mistake.In The
Last Supper on a rainy night in Paris, Paul Christopher's lover Molly
Benson falls victim to a vehicular homicide minutes after Christopher boards a
jet bound for Vietnam.To explain this
senseless murder, The Last Supper goes back not only to the earliest days of
Christopher's life, but also to the origins of the CIA.Moving seamlessly from tales of refugee
smuggling in Nazi Germany to OSS-coordinated guerrilla warfare in Burma and the
confusion of the Vietnam War, McCarry creates an intimate history of this
shadow-world of deceit and betrayal.

﻿The glittering event, organised by Cactus
TV and ITV3 in partnership with the Crime Writers’ Association, saw ITV’s
top-rating murder mystery Broadchurch pocket a quartet of awards,
including the TV Dagger for the production itself, with the latest gongs
rounding off a successful year for the show.

Winners included:

●
David Tennant of Broadchurch in the Best Actor Dagger

●
Olivia Colman of Broadchurch in the Best Actress Dagger

●
Andrew Buchan of Broadchurch in the Best Supporting Actor Dagger

●
Amelia Bullmore of Scott & Bailey in the Best Supporting Actress
Dagger

●
The Killing III in the
International TV Dagger

●
Skyfall in the Film Dagger

●
Malcolm MacKay for the
Crime Thriller Book Club Best Read

●
Mick Herron for the CWA Goldsboro Gold Dagger

●
Derek B Miller for the CWA John Creasey New Blood Dagger

●
Roger Hobbs for the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger for Best Thriller of
the Year

The ceremony will be shown on ITV3 at 9pm
on Sunday October 27, and a full list of winners is below

The awards, now in their sixth year,
marked the culmination of ITV3’s six-week prime time series, The Crime Thriller
Club which included a crime thriller version of the successful TV Book Club.

‘Living legends’ Martina Cole and Wilbur
Smith were inducted into the CWA Hall of Fame at the awards ceremony in
recognition of their contributions to the genre.

In a brand new award for 2013, The
Crime Thriller Book Club Best Read was awarded to Malcolm MacKay for The Necessary Death of Lewis Winter. Chosen
as The Crime Thriller Book Club book of the series by a group of
independent publishing experts fromthe Crime Thriller Awards Academy, The
Necessary Death of Lewis Winter beat titles by Linwood Barclay, Megan
Abbott, Christopher Fowler, Diana Bretherick and Andrew Taylor.

Malcolm MacKay said: “It’s a huge honour and thrill to win.
To be included in such a strong list of nominees is a wonderful thing for any
young writer.”

This year’s CWA Goldsboro Gold Dagger
for Best Crime Novel of the Year was won by Mick Herron for Dead Lions, a tale of secrets
which refuse to die in the shady world of Cold War spooks. Herron’s book fought
off intense competition from Belinda Bauer’s Rubbernecker, Lauren
Beukes’s The Shining Girls and Becky Masterman’s Rage Against The Dying to take
the accolade.

Mick
Herron commented: "My shelves are crammed with Gold
Dagger-winning novels of the past - The Mermaids Singing, Black and
Blue, Bones and Silence. I can't quite believe I get to put my own book next to
them."

The CWA
John Creasey New Blood Dagger for Best New Crime Writer of the Year was
awarded to Derek B Miller for his debut novel Norwegian by Night. In a
boon year for debut crime fiction Norwegian by Night and its 82-year-old
ex-Marine protagonist squared up against Hanna Jameson’s Something You Are,
Malcolm Mackay’s The Necessary Death of Lewis Winter and Thomas
Mogford’s Shadow of the Rock to nab the top spot.

Derek
B. Miller said: “My sincere thanks to the judges and the Crime Writers'
Association. This award feels less like a victory than a wonderful form of
encouragement. And I appreciate that, deeply, because no one has ever
encouraged me to write before. Tolerated me writing … sure. But encouraged me?
Not as much. So thank you.”

The CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger for Best Thriller of the Yearwent to Roger Hobbs for Ghostman. This distinctive thriller slugged
it out against impressive enemies Stuart Neville for Ratlines, Mark
Oldfield for The Sentinel and Robert Wilson for Capital Punishment
to secure victory.

Roger Hobbs said: "I'm exceptionally honoured to
have won the Ian Fleming Steel Dagger. It's a dream come true. This award puts
me in the company of so many writers I admire, like Steve Hamilton, Gillian
Flynn, and Jeffery Deaver. When I was writing this book in the basement of my
college library, scrounging off old pizza and bad coffee, I never imagined I'd
end up here. I want to offer my sincerest thanks to all the family, friends,
and co-workers who helped me make this dream possible."

Amanda Ross, Managing Director of Cactus
TV, who created the Awards for ITV3 said: ‘This is one of the most popular
genre of fiction on the screen and in books, so it’s wonderful to be able to
have this great celebration of talent courtesy of Specsavers.’

Dame Mary Perkins, Specsavers founder, said: ‘As a personal fan of a
blood curdling read, it’s been a pleasure to be a part of the Crime Thriller
Awards for the fifth year running. We’re very proud to be involved in this
annual showcase of world class writing, acting and production and would like to
congratulate all the winners and nominees.’

*ENDS*

SPECSAVERS CRIME THRILLER AWARDS 2013
WINNERS

● CWA Goldsboro Gold Dagger for the Best
Crime Novel of the Year:

Mick Herron, Dead Lions (Soho Press)

● CWA John Creasey New Blood Dagger for the
Best New Crime Writer of the Year:

The Specsavers Crime Thriller Awards 2013
took place on Thursday 24th October at London’s Grosvenor House
Hotel, and will be televised on ITV3 on the 29th October at 9pm. The
2013 Awards are the sixth annual event created and produced by Cactus TV for
ITV3. The Awards are sponsored by Specsavers and in conjunction with the Crime
Writers' Association. Visit http://www.crimethrillerawards.com/ for more information

Specsavers

Specsavers was founded by Doug and Dame
Mary Perkins in 1984 and is now the largest privately owned opticians in the
world. The couple still run the company, along with their three children. Their
eldest son John is joint managing director. Specsavers has almost 1,600 stores
throughout the UK, Ireland, the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark,
Spain and Australia. Specsavers was voted Britain’s most trusted brand of
opticians for the eleventh year running by Reader’s Digest in 2012. More
information can be found at:www.specsavers.co.uk.

Cactus TV

Cactus TV is a production company run by husband and wife team Simon and
Amanda Ross. Productions include Saturday Kitchen for BBC1, The Munch Box for
ITV, The Roux Scholarship, Hairy Bikers Food Tour of Britain for BBC2, Rachel
Allen, The National Book Awards and 8 years of the Channel 4 Richard & Judy
show live from Cactus studios. Amanda’s previous Book Club choices have created
many million selling authors.

ITV3

ITV3 is the UK’s second
most popular digital channel and its focus on character driven narrative and
drama helps the channel attract an upmarket audience. ITV3 is available on
Freeview (channel 10), Freesat (115), Sky Digital (119) and Virgin Media (116).

Crime Writers’ Association

The Crime Writers’
Association has a membership of over 500 writers of fiction and non-fiction.
Its main aims are to promote the crime genre and to support professional
writers. The CWA has been providing social and professional support for its
members for more than half a century, as well as administering the prestigious
Dagger Awards. The Daggers name and Crossed Daggers logo are registered Trade
Marks of the Crime Writers’ Association, and are used under licence. For
further information on the CWA: www.thecwa.co.uk or contact info@thecwa.co.uk.

Agile Marketing

Agile Marketing is a
publishing-specialist promotions & project management agency. They project
manage the Crime Thriller Awards in the book trade, liaising with publishers
and retailers to ensure the campaign to raise the profile of Crime Fiction is
maximised in store and amongst readers. They also manage the supporting
website: www.crimethrillerawards.com